Sericulture in India – UPSC

• Sericulture, or silk farming, means rearing silkworms for raw silk.
• It is an agro-based industry with a long chain of work:
  • Raising food plants for the worms.
  • Rearing them to get cocoons.
  • Reeling and spinning the cocoons into yarn.
  • Processing and weaving, which add value.
• Among silkworm species, Bombyx mori is the most widely used.
• Silk is called the queen of textiles, and “biosteel” for its strength.
• India produces all five commercial silks: Mulberry, Tropical Tasar, Oak Tasar, Eri and Muga. The older count of four treats Tasar as one.

Silk and Its Geography

Types of Silk

• Silk falls into two groups, by what the worm eats:
  • Mulberry silk comes from worms fed on mulberry leaves.
  • Non-mulberry or Vanya silk comes from worms fed on other plants. Vanya means wild, because these silks are mostly forest products.
• Food plants named for Indian silkworms include mulberry, mahua, sal, ber, kusum and castor.

• Muga has a golden yellow glitter and is unique to India.
• Eri cannot be reeled, so it is only spun.
• By-products of reeling are also used:
  • Spun silk yarn is made from waste filament by dressing and spinning it.
  • Noil yarn comes from the short residue left in spinning, and gives coarse counts.
• All the Vanya worms belong to the Saturniidae family. Tribal livelihoods rest on Tasar in particular, and idle women and unemployed youth have been drawn to it.

Distribution

• Silk production is mainly confined to 15° to 34° N. The climate of this belt suits mulberry.
• South India leads, and is known for weaving enclaves such as Kanchipuram, Dharmavaram and Arni.
• Mulberry sericulture is mainly practised in six States: Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Assam (Bodoland), West Bengal, Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu.
  • Six traditional States (Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir) were long reckoned at 97% of mulberry area and 95% of raw silk.
  • Sericulture has since spread to non-traditional areas.
• Limited mulberry silk comes from Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Keralam (Kerala), Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Odisha, Punjab, Tripura, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.
• Tasar is reared traditionally by tribes of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha and Jharkhand.
• The North East is the only region producing four varieties: Mulberry, Oak Tasar, Muga and Eri. It gives 18% of India’s silk.

• Silk centres:

History

• China is taken as the home of sericulture.
• Silk production from B. mori is traditionally dated to about 2700 BC, though archaeological records point to silk use still earlier.
• In India, cultivation is traditionally dated to 140 AD.
• Silk fibres from Harappa and Chanhu-daro, dated to about 2450–2000 BC, came from wild moths native to South Asia. Irene Good, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer and Richard Meadow reported them in 2009 as the earliest silk known outside China. The later date therefore holds for rearing, and wild silk was in use long before.
• Rulers of the medieval period encouraged the industry in India.
• The craft later reached Europe, the Mediterranean and other Asian countries.
• It became a major cottage industry in China, Japan, India, Korea, Brazil, Russia, Italy and France.
• China and India are now the two main producers, with far more than 60% of world output each year. Their combined share stood near 95% in 2023.

Stages of Production

• The silk moth lays eggs.
• When the eggs hatch, the caterpillars are fed mulberry leaves.
• At about 25 days, a silkworm is 10,000 times heavier than at hatching and is ready to spin.
• Silk forms in two glands in the head, and leaves as a liquid through openings called spinnerets. It solidifies in air.
• In about two or three days, the worm spins approximately 1 mile of filament and encloses itself in a cocoon.
• Little of it is of usable quality, so about 5,500 silkworms are needed for 1 kg of silk.
• Undamaged cocoons are brushed to find the outer end of the filament.
• The filaments are wound on a reel. One cocoon gives approximately 1,000 yards of filament, and the product at this stage is raw silk.
• One thread may hold up to 48 filaments.

• People in the chain: farmers, silk rearers, seed producers, reelers, twisters, spinners of silk waste, weavers and traders.

Production and Policy

Production

• India ranks second in silk, behind China.
• World position:
  • India’s share rose from about 13% (2004-05) and 17% (about 2012-13) to about 41% of some 94,000 tonnes in 2023, when China held about 53%.
• Output has grown from 1,214 tonnes in 1950 to 16,500 tonnes in 2004-05, 23,060 tonnes in 2011-12, 31,906 tonnes in 2017-18 and 38,913 tonnes in 2023-24.
• 2024-25 set a record of 41,121 tonnes, with mulberry at 31,119 tonnes and Eri at 7,886 tonnes.

• The pattern is clear: mulberry dominates, and Eri leads the Vanya silks.
• Area: mulberry was long put at about 4.5 lakh hectares. It covered 2,23,926 hectares in 2017-18 and 2,63,352 hectares in 2023-24.
• Employment:
  • About 55 lakh people were reckoned to work in the industry, and later counts ran to about 72.5 to 75.6 lakh.
  • One hectare of mulberry generates about 12 man-years of work, or at least 13 jobs a year on another count. Family members aged 18 to 60 can take up leaf cultivation (mulberry, castor), rearing, egg production, reeling and weaving.
  • Many workers are from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and weaker sections, and women take a large part.
• Exports of silk goods rose from Rs 1,649.48 crore in 2017-18 to Rs 2,027.56 crore in 2023-24. The USA, UK, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Singapore have been major buyers.
• Bivoltine silk of superior quality is in growing demand at home and for value-added exports. The Ministry of Textiles and State sericulture departments give technical and financial help for it.

• These lakh-kg figures do not form one series. Official counts give 1,214 tonnes (12.14 lakh kg) in 1950, 12,560 tonnes in 1990-91, of which 11,486 tonnes was mulberry, and 16,500 tonnes in 2004-05.

• The chart’s 2016-17 and 2017-18 values are in tonnes, with 2017-18 provisional at 31,931 tonnes. The final figure is 31,906 tonnes.

• This chart gives India’s older share of about 14%.

Central Silk Board

• The Central Silk Board (CSB) is a statutory body set up under the Central Silk Board Act, 1948, working under the Union Ministry of Textiles.
• It is the national organisation for overall development of the silk sector, from food plants through cocoons to yarn, and also shapes policy on silk imports and exports.
• At heart it is an R&D organisation: it undertakes, helps and encourages scientific, technological and economic research on silk.

Opportunities

• Employment and poverty alleviation, as a cottage industry.
• Among the most profitable rural activities.
• Indigenous technology is available at low cost.
• Regular and quick returns.
• Hand-woven silks are popular and in large demand in the West.
• Strong home demand, with silk worn on festive occasions.
• A large production gap remains to be filled for domestic demand.
• Scope for large production units and the organised sector.
• Better use of by-products would add value.
• Limits: competition from Italy and Japan, and cheaper, easy-care synthetic fibres, have set the industry back in some markets.

Government Steps

• Integrated Scheme for the Development of Silk Industry, known as Silk Samagra:
  • Works across States, Tamil Nadu among them, on feed, seed, breed, post-cocoon technology and capacity building.
  • Components:
    • Research and development, training, transfer of technology and IT initiatives.
    • Seed organisation.
    • Coordination and market development.
    • Quality certification, brand promotion and technology upgradation.
  • Silk Samagra-2 runs from 2021-22 to 2025-26, with an outlay of about Rs 4,679.85 crore.
• Cold storage and bivoltine grainages have been strengthened to give quality seed.
• Seed law: the Central Silk Board (Amendment) Act, 2006 brought silkworm seed under regulation, to raise standards, productivity and quality.
• Technology: the Board has developed technology packages, improved farm machinery, indigenous automatic reeling units, and Vanya reeling and spinning units that cut drudgery.
• Forests: a measure under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 treats non-mulberry sericulture as a forest-based activity, so farmers can rear Vanya worms on natural host trees.
• Training: the Board’s central sericultural training institute supports the cocoon sector and weavers.
• Handloom extension by the Ministry of Textiles:
  • All four varieties of silk introduced to handloom weavers.
  • Spun silk and other yarn introduced in Ikkat weaving.
  • Traditional Patola fabric converted into garments.